From 1975, German artist Annegret Soltau abandoned drawing to focus on performance, photography, and video. As she explained, these new artistic media enabled her “to be part of the image” [1] and to “use [her] portrait or [her] body as material.” [2] She became the subject of her works, which reflect her personal experiences. This was notably the case with her two pregnancies—the first in 1978 and the second in 1980—which became subjects for her art when it was still taboo for an artist to evoke their experience of childbirth: “At that time, it was not a matter of course for female artists to deal artistically with pregnancy and childbirth. On the contrary, it was frowned upon and didn’t help one’s career. There was even a quarrel among women artists, with one side taking the view that you couldn’t be a good artist with children. That left a feeling of uncertainty, and I became afraid of losing my dream of becoming an artist,” she explains. [3]

This tension between her desire to become a mother and wanting to pursue a career as an artist is visible in her work of this period. It is also the subject of the video Schwanger Sein I, which she made during her first pregnancy. In this black and white video, divided into four “phases,” Soltau reveals “[her] physical and mental state as well as [her] fears and doubts as a woman and an artist.” [4] In the first phase of Schwanger Sein I, the artist is filmed sitting at a table, on which she is resting her head. Remaining seated, she changes position, taking her head in her hands before resting it on the table again. The series of photographs
Ich bedrückt/Myself depressed (1977), taken during the filming of the video, show her in the same positions and also reveal her depressed state at that time. [5] In the second phase of the video, the artist appears standing in the corner of a room with a piece of paper stuck on each wall, one inscribed with the word “Angst” [Fear], the other with “Zweifel” [Doubt]. Soltau touches first one wall then the other with her hands. These movements become increasingly intense, as she begins to hit the walls first with the palm of her hands, then with her fists, finally throwing her whole body against them, while gradually taking off her clothes to reveal her pregnant body. This sequence reflects the artist’s psychological state during her pregnancy, caught between these two emotions. In the third phase, the artist, imprisoned in a paper cocoon, is freed by two hands that slowly tear it apart. First, we see her arms and legs appear, then her whole, entirely naked, body. In the fourth and final phase of the video, Soltau, again naked, is filmed continuously stroking her belly with both hands. Long black threads tied onto her fingers form the beginning of a web on either side of her. Their presence is a reminder of the importance of this material in the artist’s practice from 1975 onwards, not only in her performances but also in the overstitched or sewn photographs she was producing at that time.

In February 1980, Schwanger Sein I was televised after 11 p.m. on a Monday night by the German state of Hesse’s public broadcasting corporation, Hessicher Rundfunk. Viewers reacted to the broadcast by sending in letters and phoning the station. Although some reactions were positive, most reproached Soltau for her treatment of pregnancy and for exposing her naked body for art. [6] The same year, during her second pregnancy, the artist created the video Schwanger Sein II, a cnterpart to Schwanger Sein I, this time produced by ECG-TV-Studio in Frankfurt. The artist was filmed stretched out on an examination table, her swollen belly rising and falling in rhythm with her breathing. During the video, the curved blade of a sickle appears above Soltau’s belly, while her face is contorted with pain. Here, the artist is establishing a macabre relationship between maternity, childbirth, and death.

Marie Vicet, April 2025

Translated by Anne McDowall

[1] Words of the artist in an interview with Laura Leuzzi in October 2015 as part of the research project “EWVA: European Women’s Video Art,” www.ewva.ac.uk/assets/asoltau_interview_eng.pdf (accessed February 24, 2025).
[2] Annegret Soltau, in Millie Walton, “The Body as Material: An Interview with Annegret Soltau”, Trebuchet Magazine, February 27, 2021, https://www.trebuchet-magazine.com/annegret-soltau/ (accessed February 24, 2025).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Artist interviewed by Laura Leuzzi, op. cit.
[5] To move beyond the documentary nature of these photographs and endow them with artistic status, Soltau began altering the negatives by scratching them with a needle. This resulted in prints with black areas or that were totally black. See Annegret Soltau, Ich selbst (Darmstadt: Justus von Liebig Verlag, 2015), p. 41.
[6] Artist interviewed by Laura Leuzzi, op. cit.